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Popular? Certainly. JJ has dumbed Trek down for the masses and turned it into another Star Wars style cash machine, which is wonderful, I suppose.

Are we going to go through this again?

Star Trek has always been an action adventure franchise since the 1960s and also one that made money (did you think that the IDIC was made for the highfalutin things that you keep attributing to Star Trek? It was created to make money!) Ditto with all of the other merchandise too.

The Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies are popular too, and also show the same lack of respect for the original source material. Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes was a detective with a clockwork intellect, not an action hero. Roddenberry's Kirk was a disciplined, professional Starfleet officer and brilliant tactician, not an impulsive, smug little punk.

One more time for those that didn't get it (or never saw it the first time) :

I have highlighted two of the most popular pre-JJ Trek movies in the fandom.
Trek was an action franchise from the second movie installment onward. To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore everything beyond The Motion Picture.

Care to repeat the same bullshit about Star Trek again?

As for Sherlock Holmes; you didn't mind all of those movies that were set in the 1940s where Basil Rathbone as Holmes fights Nazis, so why should you mind a set of Holmes movies where Holmes has a bit of an action thing going on? Something had to be done to make the Holmes character stand out more than it used to in movies, and this was it.

The non-sci-fi one of the ones you mentioned did well. Very well. The others you mentioned were formulaic sci-fi entries with only niche appeal. What more should have been expected? They got their day and then some, as they all stayed on longer in syndication than they could have on network. The results were nothing that couldn't have been expected based on content alone.

Are you talking about Baywatch, which failed to produce a spin-off in the contracting market and, in a final gasp, relocated to Hawaii (because the state threw tons of money at them) only to fail? Please do the research.

If the slope of DS9's decline really had to do with it being in syndication, then why was it the same as the slope in the decline of both VOY and ENT as well? The fact that the slopes were parallel, with the decline of one Trek show leading into the next, would suggest that something else might be going on, besides a phenomenon specific to just syndication, or even to just one show alone; something more overarching, yes?

I'm not trying to give a monocausal explanation for DS9's performance. Market contraction was , nonetheless, a force that all syndicated shows contended with, one which TNG would have had to deal with had it remained on the air beyond season 7 (which is why I originally brought it up).

Are we going to go through this again?

Star Trek has always been an action adventure franchise since the 1960s and also one that made money (did you think that the IDIC was made for the highfalutin things that you keep attributing to Star Trek? It was created to make money!) Ditto with all of the other merchandise too.

Popular? Certainly. JJ has dumbed Trek down for the masses and turned it into another Star Wars style cash machine, which is wonderful, I suppose. The Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies are popular too, and also show the same lack of respect for the original source material. Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes was a detective with a clockwork intellect, not an action hero. Roddenberry's Kirk was a disciplined, professional Starfleet officer and brilliant tactician, not an impulsive, smug little punk.

It depends how you look at Kirk. Some see the "true" Kirk as being the "stack of books with legs" which Gary Mitchell described, while others see the Kirk that was, to quote Carol Marcus, "never a boy scout". It's all about which bits count and which don't in your mind. Remember 34 year old Kirk seducing a 19 year old girl in "Conscience of the King", or smiling at Scotty's starting a bar fight over the Enterprise being called a "garbage scow" in "Trouble with Tribbles"? Do you really think Kirk taking the Enterprise from Decker in TMP was entirely non-selfish? Or flying through space on wild adventures while Carol raised David alone? I suspect you dismiss all of that when you think of him.

The non-sci-fi one of the ones you mentioned did well. Very well. The others you mentioned were formulaic sci-fi entries with only niche appeal. What more should have been expected? They got their day and then some, as they all stayed on longer in syndication than they could have on network. The results were nothing that couldn't have been expected based on content alone.

Are you talking about Baywatch, which failed to produce a spin-off in the contracting market and, in a final gasp, relocated to Hawaii (because the state threw tons of money at them) only to fail?

You mean it failed to yield a spin-off after a successful ten year run in syndication? Big deal. By that time, it was played out. That still doesn't make it a failure.

Please do the research.

So, discovering that, at its peak, Baywatch had a weekly audience of over 1.1 billion people, making it the most watched TV show in the world at the turn of the millennium [another link, besides the one I already gave], that doesn't count as research? I did the research, thanks.

__________________“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” — Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

Popular? Certainly. JJ has dumbed Trek down for the masses and turned it into another Star Wars style cash machine, which is wonderful, I suppose.

Are we going to go through this again?

Star Trek has always been an action adventure franchise since the 1960s and also one that made money (did you think that the IDIC was made for the highfalutin things that you keep attributing to Star Trek? It was created to make money!) Ditto with all of the other merchandise too.

The Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies are popular too, and also show the same lack of respect for the original source material. Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes was a detective with a clockwork intellect, not an action hero. Roddenberry's Kirk was a disciplined, professional Starfleet officer and brilliant tactician, not an impulsive, smug little punk.

One more time for those that didn't get it (or never saw it the first time) :

I have highlighted two of the most popular pre-JJ Trek movies in the fandom.
Trek was an action franchise from the second movie installment onward. To suggest otherwise is to completely ignore everything beyond The Motion Picture.

Care to repeat the same bullshit about Star Trek again?

As for Sherlock Holmes; you didn't mind all of those movies that were set in the 1940s where Basil Rathbone as Holmes fights Nazis, so why should you mind a set of Holmes movies where Holmes has a bit of an action thing going on? Something had to be done to make the Holmes character stand out more than it used to in movies, and this was it.

You presume quite a bit for someone that doesn't know anything about me. Perhaps you should lighten up a little.

As for the TOS and TNG movies, I can see the validity of the one-liners that you posted, for the most part. I've never seen any of the Rathbone-as-Holmes serials, so I can't offer an opinion about those, one way or the other.

__________________This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.

The non-sci-fi one of the ones you mentioned did well. Very well. The others you mentioned were formulaic sci-fi entries with only niche appeal. What more should have been expected? They got their day and then some, as they all stayed on longer in syndication than they could have on network. The results were nothing that couldn't have been expected based on content alone.

Are you talking about Baywatch, which failed to produce a spin-off in the contracting market and, in a final gasp, relocated to Hawaii (because the state threw tons of money at them) only to fail?

You mean it failed to yield a spin-off after a successful ten year run in syndication? Big deal. By that time, it was played out. That still doesn't make it a failure.

Please do the research.

So, discovering that, at its peak, Baywatch had a weekly audience of over 1.1 billion people, making it the most watched TV show in the world at the turn of the millennium [another link, besides the one I already gave], that doesn't count as research? I did the research, thanks.

Incredible! You found two articles about Baywatch!

Now look for information relevant to the era after the relaxation of Fin-Syn. Anything else is just being taken out of context or only relevant to a different period of time.

Are you talking about Baywatch, which failed to produce a spin-off in the contracting market and, in a final gasp, relocated to Hawaii (because the state threw tons of money at them) only to fail?

You mean it failed to yield a spin-off after a successful ten year run in syndication? Big deal. By that time, it was played out. That still doesn't make it a failure.

Please do the research.

So, discovering that, at its peak, Baywatch had a weekly audience of over 1.1 billion people, making it the most watched TV show in the world at the turn of the millennium [another link, besides the one I already gave], that doesn't count as research? I did the research, thanks.

Incredible! You found two articles about Baywatch!

Now look for information relevant to the era after the relaxation of Fin-Syn. Anything else is just being taken out of context or only relevant to a different period of time.

Nah, I've said enough in this thread for the time being. Why don't you post some links to back up what you're saying?

I'd be interesting to know why, and by what metric, Baywatch didn't do very well in syndication, for starters.

I'd also be interested to see what can support and, more importantly, prove the claim that Star Trek's decline in ratings wasn't its own fault in terms of not delivering a product that people wanted to watch, but rather that its decline can be blamed solely on market-wide trends in cable viewing habits, starting with trends in the viewership of syndicated programming. That issue seems to me to be one of the main ones that sparked our little back and forth here.

__________________“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” — Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

Star Trek has always been an action adventure franchise since the 1960s and also one that made money (did you think that the IDIC was made for the highfalutin things that you keep attributing to Star Trek? It was created to make money!) Ditto with all of the other merchandise too.

Yes, it has always been an action adventure franchise. But it's been a smart one with a focus on writing. Kirk beat superior opponents by tricking them, outsmarting them and outwilling them. Not by beaming in and shooting everyone.

And for the 15 millionth time across all hobbyist message boards ever, the fact that companies are interested in making money, while true, is NOT an effective rebuttal to complaints about quality.

Picard Speedo wrote:

I think a new show would be a big sell with the right components. Center the plot around five bikini-clad Starfleet officers (all of varying ethnicities, one of which should ideally be a vampire) who are supermodels by day, but paranormal crime-fighters by night. They'll traverse the galaxy winning beauty pagents for the betterment of mankind, while solving crimes deemed too tough to crack. Each weekly episode will feature heavy and obvious product placement for the sponsors of the week, and once a month, the crew will become marooned on a tropical planet where they must compete against each other to stay on the show. All this excitement and more, coming soon, to a low-rated network near you.

That kind of ratings-begging gets you ratings next week, but loses them in the long term. If Star Trek is ever going to be a TV hit again it needs to focus on it's fundamentals. Exploration, smart adventure and writing.

A modernized TNG clone would be one way to do that, but as I expressed before, I'd rather them take the Breaking Bad/Game Of Thrones route of nurturing a viewer loyalty and gradually building up an audience through word of mouth by focusing on quality.

I'd also be interested to see what can support and, more importantly, prove the claim that Star Trek's decline in ratings wasn't its own fault in terms of not delivering a product that people wanted to watch, but rather that its decline can be blamed solely on market-wide trends in cable viewing habits, starting with trends in the viewership of syndicated programming. That issue seems to me to be one of the main ones that sparked our little back and forth here.

Let me help you out on this one. I wrote:

Considering the ratings decline in many shows, including DS9's, were directly related to the contraction of the market for syndicated TV, TNG would likely have suffered as well.

Nowhere did I posit a monocausal explanation for the decline of DS9's ratings. I merely made note of the changing environment in which many syndicated shows of the late 1990s dealt with. So, no, I don't need to prove such a claim because I did not make it.

I'd be interesting to know why, and by what metric, Baywatch didn't do very well in syndication, for starters.

Another claim I did not make. Baywatch did quite well in the first half of its syndicated run. It was only in the last half of the 1990s that it ran into trouble.

Nah, I've said enough in this thread for the time being. Why don't you post some links to back up what you're saying?

The information that is required is not readily available on the internet. It requires a university library. Since you are the one disputing my assertion, it's up to you to put forward evidence.

I'd be interesting to know why, and by what metric, Baywatch didn't do very well in syndication, for starters.

Another claim I did not make. Baywatch did quite well in the first half of its syndicated run. It was only in the last half of the 1990s that it ran into trouble.

Well, honestly, it sounded to me as if you made that claim. What you said was this:

Pel the Yeshiva Ferengi wrote:

Excuses such as that the syndication market was contracting just obfuscate the issue, which is simply that Star Trek, or at least the Star Trek that was being aired, was just another one of the things that people didn't want to watch in large numbers.

I invite you to research the ratings history for shows like Hercules, Xena, Babylon 5, and Baywatch. They parallel the ratings decline of Deep Space Nine. Should we assume that all those shows, all of which found themselves moved from prime time slots on Saturdays to Midnight slots on Sundays (if they were even reordered), were afflicted, at least in part, with the same disease? There was indeed a ratings ceiling that started to emerge--and lower--in the mid-1990s for syndication.

Pel the Yeshiva Ferengi wrote:

The non-sci-fi one of the ones you mentioned did well. Very well. The others you mentioned were formulaic sci-fi entries with only niche appeal. What more should have been expected? They got their day and then some, as they all stayed on longer in syndication than they could have on network. The results were nothing that couldn't have been expected based on content alone.

Are you talking about Baywatch, which failed to produce a spin-off in the contracting market and, in a final gasp, relocated to Hawaii (because the state threw tons of money at them) only to fail? Please do the research.

I took that to mean that you claimed that Baywatch steadily declined just like DS9. It didn't (remember, DS9 steadily declined over its whole run), and here's a third link to prove it. And now you're saying otherwise, too. That's fine. I misspoke in this thread, and I believe I have corrected myself.

Nah, I've said enough in this thread for the time being. Why don't you post some links to back up what you're saying?

The information that is required is not readily available on the internet. It requires a university library. Since you are the one disputing my assertion, it's up to you to put forward evidence.

Actually, the burden of proof is on the one making the assertion in the first place. A university will teach you that. If it's indeed so that the Internet doesn't have such evidence, except behind a paywall, then so be it.

On the other hand, I believe I have at least supported my assertion that the causes of Star Trek's TV demise can't be blamed on issues with respect to syndication, which, by the way, is all I said on this matter in the first place. To be honest, I'm sort of losing track of what it is we're arguing about. What I'd said was this:

Coach Comet wrote:

Excuses such as that the syndication market was contracting just obfuscate the issue, which is simply that Star Trek, or at least the Star Trek that was being aired, was just another one of the things that people didn't want to watch in large numbers.

To put it another way, things that interested Star Trek fans did not interest most people. This way attempting to solve the problem by changing the century, the specific setting (ship, station, starbase, etc.), or the available species, I think that it's just a symptom of this. For every fan that thinks that these sorts of ideas are totally awesome, there are many more people who think that they're ever more ridiculous. That's a bad equation for a prospective TV show.

For the record, I never denied that the general market trends mattered.

This isn't the first time this conversation has come up on the board. Rather than let Star Trek itself take responsibility for its share of the blame in its own demise on TV, the response has generally been, "Oh, it wasn't its fault; the market was just contracting," or some similar excuse.

I'm saying that the larger problem was Trek itself. TNG was a hit in its day, and a lot of people gave DS9 a chance, at least at first when the iron was still hot. Once TNG went off the air, there were 11 years of Star Trek, totalling in combination over 16 seasons, representing chance after chance to get it right. With so many chances at bat, how can it not be mainly Star Trek's own fault that it declined so far in ratings, and steadily, year after year, season after season?!?

So far, I haven't ventured an opinion on what the ratings of TNG season 8 would have looked like. I think that they would have gone down; there are indications in the chart I posted at the beginning of the thread that they were already starting to do just that in season 7. However, again, I think that that was because TNG had given all it had to offer, and not primarily because of "the market." By the end, it had already become quite formulaic (in the true sense of the term).

__________________“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” — Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

Yes, it has always been an action adventure franchise. But it's been a smart one with a focus on writing. Kirk beat superior opponents by tricking them, outsmarting them and outwilling* them. Not by beaming in and shooting everyone.

That's a TV show, these are movies. And Kirk in the movies was in the midst of people who were being violent, so he used violence. How the frack was he going to trick Nero into lowering his defenses on the Narada anyway? By staging a hack of the ship, then shutting off all weapons? That's now one of the oldest clichés in movies since it's use in Independence Day. Also, how was he going to apprehend Nero and Co. other than by violence? By beaming the whole crew of the Narada into the cargo holds?

*BTW, the word is 'out-witting.'

And for the 15 millionth time across all hobbyist message boards ever, the fact that companies are interested in making money, while true, is NOT an effective rebuttal to complaints about quality.

It's a good rebuttal to people who keep insisting that Roddenberry had a grand plan for Star Trek when he truly didn't (and had brought into said mythology drummed up by fans and by [most likely] himself.) Star Trek is an action-adventure franchise and was pitched as such to NBC back in the 60s, like it or not. Anything else said makes one look like the people in the famous satirical news report by The Onion.

And I'm sorry to bust your bubble, but at least the now movie truly had the Enterprise start an 'Insurrection' by fighting a part of Starfleet that does questionable things, and engaging a Starfleet ship in combat with consequences for them and for Earth. That's better than Picard & Co. engaging a Alien Race Du Jour who are bad simply because they're all ugly.